January 9, 1947. Elizabeth Short walks into the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. She paces for four hours. Makes calls. Waits. At 10 PM, someone waves through the glass doors. She walks out. Turns south on Olive Street. Forty-eight hours later, her body is found cut in half on a vacant lot.
This episode reconstructs Elizabeth Short's final 48 hours in real time. One hour of her life equals one minute of runtime. We walk backward from the moment Betty Bersinger found what she thought was a mannequin to the moment Elizabeth left the Biltmore.
Kathryn and Gabriel use newly released Los Angeles District Attorney files that debunk the "missing week" myth. Elizabeth didn't vanish. At least twelve witnesses saw her. She had dinner at Mark Hansen's house on January 11 with a boyfriend. On January 14, LAPD Officer Meryl McBride encountered her twice, first sobbing in terror about a man who threatened to kill her, then leaving a bar with two men and a woman.
Two men and a woman. The same configuration as visitors who came to the French house in San Diego, visitors she refused to see because she was "very frightened." Ten hours after McBride's final sighting, Elizabeth Short was dead.
We examine the autopsy evidence. Ligature marks indicating she was bound for extended periods. The precise bisection performed with medical knowledge. The body drained of blood, washed clean, posed like art. No blood at the scene. The killer had medical and forensic knowledge, washed evidence with gasoline, and mailed Elizabeth's belongings to the Los Angeles Examiner.
Elizabeth Short wasn't a prostitute or aspiring actress. She was 22. Her father abandoned the family when she was six. Her fiance died days before the war ended. She spent her final weeks broke and sad. The newspapers invented everything else.
SOURCES:
FBI Records on the Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short). FBI.gov.
Los Angeles Police Department case files on Elizabeth Short murder, 1947.
Los Angeles District Attorney's Black Dahlia case files, released 2003-2004.
Hodel, Steve. Black Dahlia Avenger. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003.
Hodel, Steve. Black Dahlia Avenger II. CreateSpace, 2014.
Eatwell, Piu. Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder. New York: Regan Arts, 2017.
Gilmore, John. Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder. Los Angeles: Amok Books, 1994.
Newbarr, Frederick. Coroner's autopsy report on Elizabeth Short. Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, January 16, 1947.
Witness statements: Harold Studholme (Biltmore Hotel bell captain), Betty Bersinger, Robert "Red" Manley, 1947.
Witness statements: Connie Starr, Ann Toth. Los Angeles District Attorney files.
Officer Meryl McBride witness statement. Los Angeles District Attorney files.
Dorothy French witness statements regarding San Diego sightings. LAPD case files, 1947.
Asdel, Ralph. Interview. Los Angeles Times, 2003.
Los Angeles Times archives, January 1947.
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner archives, January 1947.
Los Angeles Examiner archives, January 1947.
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Thanks for hanging with us. See you next time with another face, another crime, and probably another debate between us.
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